Why should you read “Hamlet”? – By Iseult Gillespie

https://ed.ted.com/lessons/why-should-you-read-hamlet-iseult-gillespie

Why should we read Hamlet? Why Shakespeare? Why read at all (check out this recent TEDx talk on the libraries inside each of us)? No one teaches us about humanity, irony, tragedy and deceit like Shakespeare. Tragedy evolves from human error. And who is Hamlet if not the most tragic, flawed and at the same time, human of characters ever created by a writer?

Writers try to create empathetic characters. In other words characters that we feel for, relate to, try to understand. How does Shakespeare make Hamlet so empathetic? Are there other characters from books, the movies, comics, games that cause you to similarly relate to them?

Shakespeare is widely considered the greatest writer in the English language who ever lived. Yet, ironically enough, we know very little about who he was.